In general, an endoscope refers to a medical instrument which is used to directly look inside internal organs or body cavities, and is an instrument which has been made to be inserted into an organ of which a lesion cannot be directly observed without surgery or autopsy and enables observation of the lesion.
In order to solve problems of the conventional laparotomy in which an abdominal site is incised with a knife, the endoscopy operation has been recently developed and conducted such that small holes are perforated without the incision of the abdominal site and special instruments are inserted into the holes, followed by surgery. However the conventional laparotomy has a disadvantage in that a total of four incision windows are needed since an endoscope for photographing a lesion site, an instrument for performing surgery, and assisting devices need to be respectively inserted, as shown in FIG. 1.
In order to solve the problem, devices capable of simultaneously accommodating an endoscope and surgical instruments in one tube have been used. These devices have an advantage in that works such as treatment and surgery can be performed using only one incision window since tubes into which a carrier for transmitting images, that is, an optical fiber or a camera, an optical fiber for illuminating, and instruments for performing works such as treatment and surgery under the induction of the endoscope are installed in one tube. However, since the instruments are linearly installed on one plane, the diameter of the tube needs to be enlarged.
In other words, although the recent medical demand is that the cross-sectional area of the endoscope is made as small as possible so that diagnosis or treatment is performed using a natural opening (nasal cavity or throat) or a small incision window in a non-invasive or less invasive manner, the foregoing method has a disadvantage in that the area to be incised is increased at the time of surgery.
In order to solve the problem, Korean Patent Application Publication No. 10-2011-0104234 discloses an electronic endoscope providing three-dimensional image data. The main technical configuration thereof is that, as shown in FIG. 2, the endoscope has a pipe-shaped body (13) which is inserted into the patient's body to provide image information, wherein the pipe-shaped body (13) includes: a tip part (11) having an opened tip; a bendable part (12) connected to the tip part (11), and being bent when the tip part (11) is inserted into the patient's body; a first photographing part (14) installed at one side surface inside the tip part (11), being operable in an up-and-down direction and in a rotational direction by interlocking with the operation of a first operating rod (17) connected to a lower end thereof, and having a photographing device (16) installed at a front surface thereof; and a second photographing part (15) installed at the other side surface inside the tip part (11), being operable in an up-and-down direction and in a rotational direction by interlocking with the operation of a second operating rod (18) connected to a lower end thereof, and having a photographing device (16) installed at a front surface thereof.
The foregoing configuration has an advantage in that two photographing parts and an illuminating parts for photographing three-dimensional images are folded inside the pipe-shaped body and the photographing parts are spread in the human body, so that the diameter of the body is decreased, thereby minimizing the incision at the surgical site, but has a disadvantage in that an incision window through which instruments necessary for treatment and surgery can be inserted needs to be further formed.
The foregoing configuration also has a disadvantage in that, since a separate device for washing the photographing parts is not prepared, a photographed image cannot be differentiated in cases where foreign substances are attached on lenses of the photographing parts inserted into the body.